March 15
CHINA:
Death penalty for heroin smugglers
4 key members of a notorious drug ring convicted of trafficking 21
kilograms of heroin have been sentenced to death in southwest China's
Guizhou Province. They can appeal.
Liu Xianyin, Cai Junhu, Peng Yougui and Yang Nengxue were given the death
penalty.
2 other members of the 11-member ring, Liu Yangpeng and Hong Xingbo,
received a suspended death sentence with a two-year reprieve by the
Intermediate People's Court in Bijie Prefecture of Guizhou.
Prosecutors said the 6 bought a truck in January 2005 to ship heroin from
the China-Myanmar border to the interior.
They were caught with 21.8 kilograms of heroin on return from trafficking
in April.
Police found Liu Xianyin's bank cards and deposit books for 1.8 million
yuan (US$225,000).
Other ring members received sentences ranging from 15 years to life.
(source: Shanghai Daily)
JAPAN:
Court upholds cult death penalty
Tokyo High Court on Wednesday upheld the death penalty of a former
doomsday cult member convicted in attacks including the 1995 Tokyo subway
nerve gassing that killed 12 people, a court official said.
Tomomitsu Niimi, former "home affairs minister" of the Aum Shinrikyo cult,
was sentenced to hang in 2002 for murdering 26 people in 7 separate
attacks. He appealed his death sentence.
The court official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of court
rules, had no other details of the decision.
Niimi gained notoriety at the start of his trial in 1996 by refusing to
enter pleas and pledging eternal loyalty to former cult leader Shoko
Asahara, who was sentenced to die in 2004 but is appealing.
Although Niimi has denied involvement in the Tokyo subway attack, he has
reportedly admitted to all other charges brought against him. But Niimi
claims he was following Asahara's orders and shouldn't be subject to the
death penalty.
Cult members released the lethal sarin nerve gas on subway trains
converging in central Tokyo in March 1995. The fumes killed 12 people,
sent thousands to the hospital and paralyzed the center of the capital.
Niimi also was convicted of helping organize the 1989 strangulation of
lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto -- one of the first to question the cult's
activities -- and the lawyer's wife and son.
The charismatic Asahara had predicted an apocalypse that only cult members
would survive. The cult -- which at its height claimed 40,000 members in
Japan and Russia -- was developing chemical, biological and conventional
weapons in an apparent attempt to attack population centers and overthrow
the government.
The cult was declared bankrupt in March 1996, but later regrouped under
the name Aleph. It is under surveillance by Japan's Public Safety Agency,
which has warned that the group remains a threat.
(source: Associated Press)
PHILIPPINES:
Abolish capital punishment
President Arroyo has demonstrated the will to abolish capital punishment.
Its abolition has long been overdue. It is up to Congress to push it
through.
Last week President Arroyo reprieved 15 death-row convicts who were
scheduled for execution by lethal injection. The palace said the grant of
executive clemency to the doomed men is under study.
Not since her assumption of the presidency in January 2001 has Mrs. Arroyo
ever ordered an execution. A devout Catholic, the President imposed a
moratorium on the death penalty after coming to power.
Many times in the past, the President also granted reprieves to many other
death convicts. Her apparent demurral to give the order for their
execution reflects her stand against capital punishment. This is bolstered
by her recent statement before the Foreign Correspondents Association of
the Philippines that she would certify as urgent a bill that will repeal
the country's death penalty law.
That statement drew a spontaneous response from different sectors,
particularly the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, welcoming
her commitment to scrap capital punishment.
"We laud the signal decision. It seems that we have finally regained our
senses for we have abolished the death penalty law before only to
reinstate it and make our country one of the few that sill adopt the
execution of life as an ultimate punishment," said Puerto Princesa Bishop
Pedro Arigo, chairman of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral
Care.
Fr. Silvino Borres Jr., president of the Coalition against Death Penalty,
said the President's decision befits a nation that believes in God and
affirms that the Philippines is a modern civilized state.
Lest her statement be misunderstood as currying favor with the CBCP, which
has joined the clamor for her resignation, the President said her stand
against capital punishment was anchored on her Catholic beliefs. She has
demonstrated her faith in God and in the goodness of man.
The death penalty issue has long been subjected to endless debates when
Congress decided to abolish it in 1987, when it resolved to revive it in
1993 and again in 1996 when it was amended to make lethal injection the
mode for carrying out an execution.
Since then, after a number of executions, the abolition of the death
penalty law has been raised by various pro-life groups mainly on moral
grounds. They argue that the crime rate has not abated but has even
worsened despite the death penalty law, which means that capital
punishment has not deterred criminality in the country.
What strikes us as a gross and irreparable mistake that may be committed
in carrying out the death penalty is when an innocent person is unfairly
convicted and executed. We should reckon with the probable unfairness of
the judicial system where those least able to defend themselves because of
their failure to hire good lawyers run the risk of being railroaded to
death.
In the United States, the main objection to capital punishment is the view
that it is impossible to administer it fairly. Those against the death
penalty law cited statistics to show judicial bias as in the conviction of
more blacks accused of raping white women than of whites accused of the
same crime against non-white women.
More concerns over the harshness of the capital punishment have triggered
universal efforts for its abolition in many countries since the end of the
18th century. England repealed all but a few of its capital statutes in
the 19th century. Some countries, led by Venezuela and Portugal, abolished
the death penalty entirely.
In the US, the death penalty law is circumscribed by the Eighth Amendment
to the Constitution which mandates that "excessive bail shall not be
required, nor excessive fines, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted."
The global trend is to veer away from retributive justice, which violates
the sanctity of an offender's life that only God may take away, toward
restorative justice which offers hope of reformation to a criminal. The
gravity of a crime does not call for a severe punishment that requires the
"primitive rule of an eye for an eye, a life for a life."
President Arroyo has demonstrated the will to abolish capital punishment.
Its abolition has long been overdue. It is up to Congress to push it
through.
(source: Manila Times/ABS-CBNNews)
